


things that should remain unsaid

by honeybun



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, Fluff, He Tian gets engaged, Idiots in Love, M/M, Requited Unrequited Love, dont worry it doesn't last long lol xox, somewhat arranged marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27923815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybun/pseuds/honeybun
Summary: 'Engaged!'Mo Guan Shan reads over the one word again, figures blurring together, word rolling around his head and no longer making any sense. He feels his hands shake as he puts away the paper and his vision blurs.He Tian, engaged. Well wasn't that something.It feels like being hit by a truck.
Relationships: He Tian & Mo Guanshan (19 Days), He Tian/Mo Guanshan (19 Days)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 353





	things that should remain unsaid

Mo Guan Shan was never quite certain where he stood, not in life, not in love. 

It was on this uneven footing that He Tian and himself seemed to dance around one another, both always at risk of falling, both unlikely to be offered a helping hand. It was exhilarating at times, but mostly it just felt like the bottom of your stomach just fell out and flopped onto the floor. Emergency assistance pending. 

He Tian just showed up sometimes, more and more frequently until it became odder to arrive back at his small shabby apartment to no one than to He Tian smoking on the balcony or lounging on the couch. Guan Shan will snap at him to put out his cigarette, knowing that the building’s smoke alarms aren’t worth shit regardless, but just wanting to say something to break the tension. Hello might do for normal people, but never for them. 

_‘Hello_ ,’ says He Tian, always challenging the terms and conditions of this- this _thing_ between them, running circles and ducking through loop holes while Mo just tries to keep up with all he’s got. 

Guan Shan grunts, puts his backpack to one side and makes his way to the kitchen, closely followed by He Tian. 

They don’t ask about work, that would make them too much like a couple, something they resolutely are not. But instead He Tian observes the dark bags under Guan Shan’s eyes, the slump of his shoulders, how he was too tired to even take his shoes off. 

‘I’ll make dinner.’

‘ _The fuck you will_ ,’ Guan Shan spits back, clattering through cupboards and diving into a fridge which needs restocking. He Tian wishes sometimes that it was easier to look after him, but that would be too much, admitting more than he thinks he can back up, letting his heart and mouth run in tandem ahead of his head and the reality of it all. 

Instead, he gets two beers and cracks them open on the side of his car keys, one of those party tricks you think is cool when you’re a teenager but makes Mo roll his eyes now. He Tian smiles when he sees him do it, that’s the whole point of the thing really. 

He Tian lifts the cool beer to his lips and contemplates the back of Mo’s neck. He imagines leaning over and pressing a kiss there, how he could huddle closely against his back and press his nose into that red hair. He doesn’t do it. This has always been about resistance, about getting only part of what you want, fighting and pulling at one another at the same time as pushing away. 

Eventually they eat, little said between them, the silence enough, more than enough. This time where they can be together without the heavy burden of what’s so apparent around them remaining unsaid. At one point Guan Shan’s feet creep towards He Tian’s thigh on the sofa, both of them not really watching whatever’s on the TV anymore. He Tian lets his hand drop to cup against the arch of Mo’s foot, and knead at the sore flesh. He wouldn’t let him help, wouldn’t let him pay his way out of this little good for nothing apartment which sucked up all his earnings and gave him little for it, so the least he can do is do this, while he still can. 

After a while there’s that look between them, Guan Shan sinking further down on the couch and freely pressing his feet into He Tian’s palms, head lolling to the side and breathing getting heavier, a voice husky with threatening sleep breaking out, ‘You’re good at that,’ he comments. 

He Tian lets his fingers pluck at each individual toe, ‘I’m good at lots of things,’ he replies, voice seeping honey. 

Mo Guan Shan’s eyes narrow, but he does not pull away, ‘Show me,’ he mumbles. 

He Tian likes it like this, loves it, the complete uncertainty of it all, not knowing what he’ll be getting, when it’ll be offered - maybe it won’t at all. Sex was never like this before, girls pliant and gasping beneath him, clinging to his shirt afterwards when he’d quite like the bed to himself now, please. It grabs at him with both hands and Guan Shan gives as much as he gets, teeth and nails and bite marks that leave impressions He Tian treasures for weeks. 

He gives Mo his fair share too, far too possessive to let him get away without a mark or two. They pull at one another in the small cramped quarters of Mo’s bedroom, air conditioning fucked for months now and the buzz of a threatening mosquito always nearby. He Tian nudges his nose into Guan Shan’s neck just as he wanted to before, in between the rushed, trembling violence of their desperate coupling he allows himself small errors of softness. Stroking his fingers on Mo’s sensitive waist, watching him twitch and his stomach jerk with wanting to laugh. Hear him breathlessly curse, _‘Fuck_ , you bastard, just- _stop_ that!’ 

He hides softness where Mo won’t find it, more chaste kisses just under his ear, and when they’re finished and Mo quiets down to sleep, he slips a delicate finger over the ridges of his face, like he’s memorising the curvature there, an old cartographer noting the ridges and ravines of a landscape. 

‘Won’t you leave me to sleep?’ Mo mumbles, He Tian doesn’t let his fingers stop.

‘No,’ he answers, unrepentant, and Mo huffs a laugh next to him, the breath brushing against his palm.

Guan Shan is illuminated by the light streaming through the cracks of slightly damaged blinds, the yellowish glare of the city casting long shadows. He hears as his breathing evens out again, the terminal frown on his face flattening out finally. He Tian thinks he’s most beautiful like this, but then he also thinks that when he laughs, or when he talks about something he finds interesting, or when he cooks, or when they fuck. He looks younger, less plagued by the reality of living in a harsh world. He Tian once again wishes he’d let him take care of him and indulges in that thought for a moment. Knowing it can never be. 

\----

Mo had known about Lui Xun for some time, had furtively rooted through colourful socialite magazines in the corner shop before being told to _pay_ or _leave_. She’s been splashed in the society pages, looking perfect and moonlike and untouchable. He supposed He Tian touched her though. 

He should thank her, really, for setting the whole thing off. When Mo Guan Shan had first been aware of her it had kicked his foolish brain into action and a realisation that yes, he would quite like to kiss He Tian, and other things too. Many other things. 

They’d fooled around so much, from middle school to high school, that it had felt like it never had to end, that they could exist in this bubble forever, the gravitational pull between them inevitably forcing them together. He cringed thinking at what he’d done, after one dull mention of her from Jian Yi, ‘Oh, He Tian has a girlfriend, right?’ he’d stormed over to his apartment, his head a mess of white noise on the train, on the walk over. 

He’d barged past He Tian at the door who had barely raised an eyebrow, ‘I can barely ever get you to come over, and now you’re forcing your way in _Little Mo_ ,’ he’d said it so teasingly but Guan Shan could hear the curiosity behind it. 

He hadn’t known what he was doing, barely eighteen and so twisted up and- he’d kissed him, not like that awful time in middle school but completely new and completely right suddenly. It felt like when your ears popped on an airplane, or the strange loss of air in your lungs when going over a bump in the road. 

He’d never thought He Tian was merciful, mainly because he never had been. But when he’d pulled away, eyes on the floor and his face turning as red as his hair, hand on his backpack and ready to run all the way back home, Tian leans back down and kisses him again. For as many years as they’ve been playing this game together, the dance they’ve practiced so well, He Tian has never asked him why, _why_ had he come to him that first time. Mo thinks it’s because he knows, surely he does. As well as he knows himself he knows Mo Guan Shan. 

They’d made out on the sofa for what felt like hours, Guan Shan’s lips reddening and sore, He Tian’s shining with saliva. He looked different here, in the dark of his cavernous apartment, and Guan Shan wanted to keep him forever. Felt like asking, _Oh, how would you feel about never going outside again? Does that work for you?_

But he doesn’t ask. 

A few months later and they’re still playing, the strange duo they strike turns out to be fairly easy to maintain, something Mo had never counted on before. Both too volatile, both too messed up, jagged edges and chipped shoulders. But strangely it works, He Tian brings over groceries and they cook together, on Friday night Mo Guan Shan comes to watch his show on Tian’s television that gets more channels, blushing full, strawberry red when Tian teases him over his _soap operas_.

‘It’s a _historical drama_ ,’ Mo grumbles as he self consciously passes a hand over his cheek to hide the blush, again He Tian is merciful and doesn’t push it, even though he keeps his shit-eating grin plastered across his face, a small price to pay for complicity. 

It’s things like that which make him wonder, the things that he gives to Mo that he doesn’t allow anyone else. Jian Yi and Zhan Zheng Xi are not immune to his scathing retorts, but somehow there settles a comforting quiet over them both when they’re together like this. If Mo Guan Shan squints his eyes and tilts his head he might even call it _domestic_. But he doesn’t, otherwise he’d have to shoot himself. 

When Mo Guan Shan pretends he isn’t looking He Tian will reach over and put a hand in his back pocket, not even groping, just so he can sidle close as he acts like he’s interested in what’s cooking. Once he accosts him in the bathroom to help him shave because apparently he doesn’t do it _right_. 

One evening Guan Shan wears the black studs He Tian had bought him all that time ago, the only thing he’s ever fully allowed himself to request, and he can see it sets a light in Tian’s stomach, because it does to him, too. 

He’d never really been with anyone else he ponders suddenly, in middle school and high school he’d been too preoccupied with his own misery and then He Tian, fucking _He Tian_. He’d dragged him into a group of friends and into the light that he’d thought didn’t exist for him anymore. 

It hadn’t been much more than messy handjobs and sucking one another off when they were drunk, but he’d always known He Tian wanted more, exactly his character to want _more_ , all of it. 

He Tian is looking at him strangely, in a way Guan Shan doesn’t recognise, ‘You want me to _..._?’

Mo Guan Shan shoves a hand in his hair and turns towards the bathroom, He Tian perching on his bed and unbuttoning his shirt, ‘ _Never mind_ -’ he replies, teeth grit as a hand catches and tightens in his shirt. He Tian stands up, the heat of him against Mo’s back far too comforting, he’s far too tall thinks Mo distantly. 

‘I’ll take care of you,’ He Tian whispers in his ear, the dark encompassing them both, He Tian’s hands burrowing and nipping at buttons, Mo Guan Shan doesn’t second guess him, he knows it’s true. 

Of course it hurts, just a little, but he can barely feel it when He Tian is breathing in his face, breath jumping and mouth open and gasping, eyes wide and taking in every single movement, it’s so overwhelming, and He Tian even more so. 

‘It’s never felt- it’s never been like-’ He Tian stops himself and Mo is glad of it, unsure he could take it if he finished the sentence. Instead he strokes the back of Tian’s hair, the nape of his neck. 

They lie together afterwards, Guan Shan allows himself to be handled gently, carefully tucked into Tian’s broad chest as if warming him by the furnace that lies underneath his skin. Even though it’s dark he can see the beetleish glint of Tian’s eyes, watching him as always, observing each twitch, each move away from him is instantly halted and he’d brought even closer.

‘I don’t love her, you know,’ He Tian speaks quietly into the void, ‘I don’t even _like_ her that much,’ he admits, something freeing about being cloaked in darkness, Guan Shan clasped to his chest in a strange confessional, ‘My father set it up…’ he finishes up lamely. What rings in Guan Shan’s ears instead are, _I don’t like her how I like you_ , and, maybe, that other word which Guan Shan doesn’t let himself think of. 

‘Can we keep on…’ Mo trails off, hand gesturing between them both, feeling guilty for the lack of guilt he feels towards this poor girl, a pawn in something bigger than herself, bigger than all of them. It’s almost funny that not much has changed, marrying off pretty daughters to errant sons, hoping it’ll calm them down, or stop them fucking red headed boys, Mo thinks absently. 

He Tian huffs a laugh through his nose and twines long fingers in Mo’s hair, ‘You think I’d let you go that easy, sweetheart?’ and as Guan Shan flushes at not only the statement but the endearment which falls off He Tian’s tongue so easily, He Tian leans and sets his teeth against Guan Shan’s shoulder. 

He’s always known they wouldn’t be normal, can’t be, probably. Where other couples have anniversaries and shared family vacations, they have bite marks and bared teeth, grasping fingers and always, always, pushing closer.

Mo Guan Shan doesn’t think he’ll ever wish for more, thinks surely he doesn’t deserve it. Life never really works out like that for him. But it isn’t long until it is not enough. Because of course there is the craving for more, this twisting thing that reaches poisonous branches that cling and prick at Guan Shan’s skin, it’s always been more. He was foolish to believe any different, that it was a fling, something they’d grow out of. As if anything with He Tian had ever been _simple_ , as if Mo Guan Shan had ever had it _easy_. 

As if it wasn’t love, in whatever terrible form they’d found it, whatever horrific timing. 

\---

Jian Yi is banging a fist against his door and has been for the last ten minutes. The neighbours’ll get pissed off soon Mo thinks vaguely through a fog of whatever it is surrounding his bain. Despite his absolute shit of a headache he goes to the door.

‘If you break this door you’re buying me a new one,’ he comments, but even to his own ears it sounds hollow.

‘So you’re not dead then, that’s good,’ Jian Yi sighs and goes to flop on his sofa, ‘You sure do look like shit, though,’ Guan Shan wishes he’d put headphones on and said fuck the neighbours.

He does a loop around the small living space, picking up beer bottles and quickly snatching up rumpled tissues in his way. 

‘So,’ begins Jian Yi.

‘So,’ sighs Mo Guan Shan. Would the world not just _fuck off_? 

‘He’s getting married,’ Jian Yi says, this time a little gentler.

To hear it said out loud like that makes it worse, like it isn’t just a bad dream or some rumour. The last nail in the coffin.

He’d known they couldn’t continue forever, but he’d hoped _not-forever_ could have gone on for a little bit longer, just, just- 

_When would you have stopped?_ A different voice asks him, prodding at his swelling brain. _You wouldn’t have, and you know it,_ it jibes. 

He’d seen it in the papers, of all fucking things, He Tian looking immaculate, in a suit he’d worn for their second anniversary which neither of them acknowledged was the fact but both of them had earmarked the date in the back of their minds, in their calendars and had booked a table. Somewhere He Tian could ring and get a place instantly while some poor fucker got sent to the back of the queue. He Tian’s foot had rubbed against his ankle the entire evening and when they’d got back to Tian’s apartment they’d already divested one another of most of their clothes. They’d fucked on the floor and He Tian had crushed him when he’d finished, body flopping on top of his. _It’s never been this good_ he’d said, still in Guan Shan and wet mouth trailing kisses against his chest and neck. 

Jian Yi notes his silence and gestures towards the dead phone on the table, ‘You haven’t been picking up your phone.’

He does distantly remember it had stopped ringing after the first two days, Guan Shan huddled under heavy covers and refusing to come out. The buzz had been comforting somewhat, notifications stacking up and up until the battery had died and he’d not let himself charge it. He Tian would get tired of it, tired of him. So what was the point?

‘He wants to speak to you, you know,’ Mo rolls his eyes. After the phone had died he’d come over, banging on the door, voice hushed and desperate and pleading, _let me in, Guan Shan, please._

He’d gone away eventually, only to return and slip a letter under the door ‘ _PLEASE EAT_ ’, and a bag of takeaway food on the mat. Guan Shan had let himself prod a finger inside to see - ah yes, his favourite. An apology that he knows how to give, _please forgive me for marrying someone else._

He’s being unfair, Mo thinks to himself. He’d always known this was what would happen, that the He’s were rich and powerful and of course they’d like to better themselves as best they could by whoring out their youngest bachelor. It wasn’t He Tian’s fault, he knew that, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut again to keep the tears at bay. It was better this way, a clean break, so Tian could start again with his wife, so he could be unencumbered by some _poor_ son of a bitch who mostly just snapped at him. 

Jian Yi stays a while, puts a few more things in his fridge and clears up the debris of heartbreak from around Mo Guan Shan who sits huddled in a thick blanket. If he unstuffs his nose and lets himself, he can still faintly smell He Tian on his sheets, his body resting with him most nights, for years now, until recently. 

‘Look,’ Jian Yi starts when he reaches the door, ‘I don’t agree with what he’s done but there’s no use just-’ he gestures with his hands, struggling to find the words, _‘Punishing_ yourselves like this-’ he sounds frustrated, like he’s had this conversation before. Mo Guan Shan’s ears pick up quickly on the word ‘yourselves’ as if Tian might be in a place just as bad as he is. 

He takes a deep breath and drums his fingers against the wood of the door, Mo Guan Shan takes a breath which hurts his chest - most things at the moment seem to hurt - ‘Thank you, Jian Yi, for-’ _for forcing your way in_ , ‘for checking up on me.’ 

He looks like he wants to say something else, but Mo Guan Shan is turning quickly and marching back to his bedroom, eyes swimming. He hears the door shut. It is only some time later that he realises He Tian stopped coming over - taking the leftover takeaway which lay untouched, and replacing it with something new, another favorite - and instead sent over Jian Yi. He was always too clever, careful maneuvers to get the work he wanted done. 

\---

‘I’ve never seen him like that,’ Jian Yi comments, head bowed low and his hands cupping the warm coffee between them, ‘Redhead’s always been such a little shit, it’s hard to see him look like he’s gonna cry, like you just kicked a puppy or something-’ 

‘Jian Yi-’ scolds Zhan Zheng Xi, tutting. He looks away at the waitress they’ve been trying to catch the attention of for ten minutes, ‘He Tian called me to complain about the beef stew he’d just ordered at some fancy restaurant the other day, Jesus _Christ-’_ he rubs a hand against his face, ‘He was all ‘ _It’s not right_ ’ and ‘ _When Mo makes it’_ blah blah, the fucker’s obsessed.’ 

Jian Yi winces as his heart aches, ‘I mean his fucking _dad_ proposed _for_ him, Xixi, what do you even do with _that_?’ 

Zheng Xi sighs when he finally manages to flag down the waitress and he taps his card against the reader, ‘I don’t know,’ he replies, unable to even imagine. As they walk from the cafe their shoulders bump together, ‘I’ve never seen the bastard as _broken_ as that-’ he pauses, grimacing at the memory, ‘Looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, cigarettes piling up in glasses and- _fuck_ , I don’t know…’

‘I just wish they’d _talk_ to one another,’ Jian Yi laments, and Zheng Xi looks at him curiously, ‘What?’ 

‘I was just thinking you’d grown up, is all,’ Zheng Xi replies.

‘Being tempted by my maturity are you, Xixi?’ Jian Yi teases, finger going to prod at Zheng Xi’s cheeks.

‘I take it back!’ Zheng Xi shouts, batting away the finger and marching along faster so Jian Yi has to sprint to catch up. 

As they near the train Jian Yi looks contemplative again, ‘I suppose we’re lucky, really,’ and looks up at Zheng Xi, who nods and shuffles his feet.

‘Yeah,’ Zheng Xi looks up, ‘We are.’ 

\--- 

It hits Mo Guan Shan a little too late that Jian Yi is a very good friend. The bastard had been too annoying in middle school and high school to notice it really, but by the time he’s stopped over at Guan Shan’s place several times that week to check he’s still breathing along with bringing him food, it occurs to him. 

There was an uneasy routine here, where they’d both avoid the elephant in the room that was tall and dark and handsome and instead watch sports or eat junk food. Mo Guan Shan misses his soap opera. 

It’s been a month now, and he’d finally charged his phone again, swiping through the messages from He Tian quickly becomes too painful so instead he exits from the messaging app and resolutely does not return. He calls his mother and tries to stem his tears when she asks after _‘TianTian’_ and what he’s been up to lately. 

She sounds confused, and all too worried, when he makes up a lame excuse to hang up afterwards, ‘Sweetheart, is everything alright?’ he’s halfway back to his bedroom and his throat catches on a wet breath, _sweetheart_ . He Tian had never been frugal with his pet names, _baby_ , _sweetheart_ , _darling_ , they all made Guan Shan’s ears hot but he loved them all the same, refusing to let the bastard know. A softness he hadn’t thought He Tian capable of, one he hadn’t thought he deserved. It had surprised Tian too. 

He’d fobbed her off with excuses about working too hard - he’d called in sick for the first two weeks, and it was hard to avoid the familiar heart palpitations which came with his bills so he’d gone back, shirking colleagues questions and clocking in and out without so much as a hello or goodbye. 

That night when Jian Yi lets himself in it’s to a cooked meal this time, finally using the groceries he’d shoved without question into Mo’s hands. 

It’s good, it always is, but somehow it lacks the certain tang that usually accompanies Guan Shan’s cooking, he doesn’t look as animated as he tells him what it is he’s made today. It’s good enough. 

They make awkward conversation, which to be honest isn’t as awkward as it once was, and again Guan Shan wonders when it was they became friends, and whether Tian had somehow done this for him, too. 

Jian Yi leaves with a promise prised from Guan Shan’s reluctant lips to come play ball with him this weekend, the first time he’ll have somewhat willingly left the house for anything other than work or food. When he calls to cancel he is treated carefully, although he feels guilty anyway, and he swears he just needs to catch up on a few things while twiddling with the hem of a sweater that had been He Tian’s, but he’d commandeered it. The bastard had looked so smug, so openly possessive when Guan Shan had wandered around in it, nothing else. It is torture then, intentionally inflicted, to wear something that covers him in He Tian’s scent that he hasn’t had for weeks now. Guan Shan wonders whether it will ever be easier, when he won’t be brimming over with emotion, buffeted about in the wind and everything so quick to wound him. Maybe it won’t ever get easier. Mo Guan Shan thinks that’s probably right. Penance for those few years, an equal exchange. He’d built up a debt of happiness that he has to repay. 

That night his phone buzzes and lights up the dark, small space of his bedroom, as it has done for more than a month now. A phone call that goes silent after being ignored for a few minutes, and then a text on it’s coattails. Mo Guan Shan isn’t ready to look yet. He doesn’t know if he ever will be, and he’s deeply fearful of the time which inevitably will come when the phone calls and the texts will stop, when Jian Yi will get sick of his moping around, when he’s made to once again face up to the harsh reality of the world without the protective, incessant presence of He Tian at his side. 

He rolls over and it is yet another routine event, another thing ticked off his list, when wetness drips past his nose and bleeds into the covering of his pillow. 

\--- 

Once again, it’s a magazine that catapults him right back to months ago, the feeling of having the rug pulled from under you, expecting another step and the sickening lurch as your foot falls through thin air. He’s back in the same corner shop, too, tobacco leaching into the wallpaper from years of smoke from patrons and shop owners alike. It’s only a small announcement, concise, like it’s certainly hiding something, hush money, tight lipped.

Mo Guan Shan had been waiting for it for weeks, had been looking in part to injure himself. He knew the He’s didn’t wait long, that they’d want to secure a lucrative business deal like that of a marriage pretty quickly, a very profitable merger. He Tian had told him once in a tone which didn’t convey all the strain he obviously felt, that his father never quite listened to him, that he knew he thought he was doing the best for him, but that usually wasn’t what He Tian wanted, or needed. Guan Shan had kissed him quickly before he could say too much, before he might regret letting such things ring in the ears of Mo Guan Shan of all people, and soon enough he’s on his knees and sucking Tian to make him forget anything at all, his own name even, but never Mo Guan Shan’s. 

The announcement looks funny, and Guan Shan suddenly realises his hands are shaking, the blurry red of a heart broken superimposed against the same picture he’d seen all that time ago. ‘ **_Broken up_ **’ it said, so sure, so to the point, as if this didn’t turn Mo Guan Shan’s world upside down all over again. 

He exits the shop before he can be asked once again to _pay or leave_ , and makes his way quickly to his apartment, air stifling and suffocating him until he’s running and the jolt of his feet hitting the pavement ricochets against the concrete. 

_Broken up?_

Why hadn’t he- well, Mo Guan Shan casts his mind back to every night since he’d found out, the calls that had never stopped, the texts he’d never been able to bear looking at.

When he gets back he leans against the wood of the door as he’s locked it, blocking out the outside world again, his own private world quite enough for now, _thank you_. It takes him a while, his numb fingers ineffectively clasping at the plastic of his phone, but eventually he has it in his palm, thumbs in his passcode and allows himself for once to read the messages. Scrolling from the bottom to somewhere in the middle, at which time he has to cover his eyes and slide to sit by the base of the door.

  * Good morning
  * Goodnight 
  * Will you fucking answer your phone.
  * Good morning 
  * I need to talk to you.
  * Goodnight 
  * I’m sorry.
  * Good morning
  * Today I saw a dog I thought you’d like, goodnight.
  * Mo answer your phone.
  * Good morning.



Every day. For months. Inane things about this day interspersed with pleading him to answer his phone, dog photos and things he’d eaten ‘ _You make it better, though_ ’, he’d added. And then, around the time it had all happened, longer texts.

  * I just want you in my arms again. Please can you let me in. I can explain.



The notification of a voice message which Mo taps and listens to with an ache building behind his eyes, He Tian’s voice run ragged and hoarse, ‘I was _breaking up_ with her, Guan Shan, you have to believe me- my _dad_ , fuckin’- I’m trying to figure it out, okay, don’t give up on me, don’t give up on me, _please-_

He’d pressed the red button to cancel the call, He Tian’s voice making his heart clench, he sounded desperate, alone, pleading. 

‘You’re a fucking idiot, Mo,’ he told himself, head in his hands, phone digging a divot in his temple. 

‘ _Guan Shan?_ ’ a breathless voice calls through the phone, tinny and far away. Mo Guan Shan almost drops it and dies from the shock- _fucking_ fingers, he’d fucking hit the return call- _shit_. 

‘Y-yes-’ his voice cracks and he winces at the silence at the other end of the call.

‘Can I come over?’ He Tian asks then, voice openly pleading, raw and as open as a wound. 

‘Please,’ Guan Shan answers, body curling in towards his phone, bunching up as if he’s hurtling through empty space.

He hears the slam of a car door, the roar of an ignition, it scares him how good it feels, how light he suddenly is after all that pain, as if He Tian could immediately alleviate it, use his strong hands that are still inexplicably larger than his own to take Mo’s burden upon his own shoulders. Feels like taking flight, running back towards one another.

‘Don’t hang up, okay,’ He Tian asks, demands, Mo hears the distant beep from cars as Tian passes them. He used to grip the sides of the car and close his eyes, accepting his fate as Tian wove in and out of heavy traffic, down the highway and past the blinking lights of the city. 

It isn’t long until he hears the door slam again, then the quick tap of polished, expensive leather shoes as they rush up stairs, metallic clang of the safety bar in his hand. 

There’s a knock on the door. Mo Guan Shan finds it in him to shuffle away slightly, legs still numb, and open up the door. He’d always wondered why He Tian hadn’t just gone and let himself in the times he’d come to the door, but he knew the answer, knew that He Tian knew him too well, that his privacy was the only thing wholly his, that sometimes he’d need his own space for a week, to not be bothered too much, that a locked door was a locked door even if you have the key. Mo Guan Shan knew this, and still had wished he’d come in anyway, forced his way back in, taking whatever he could. That was how he felt, plundered. Left on the rocks without anything left, He Tian had shouldered into his heart with every small nudge and shove, making himself at home there. Mo Guan Shan’s heart hadn’t ever felt so full as when He Tian had been there, he felt it wasn’t truly his anymore, that in the mornings when He Tian would leave and carefully place a kiss on his temple as if they both could pretend Mo was asleep, which he wasn’t, that his heart followed him out into dark alleyways and smokey clubs. To her, clinging to his sleeve and hoping it wouldn’t be brushed off. 

He Tian opens the door a little wider, turning sideways to slip between the gap, looking taller than ever, a little thin, his eyes sinking a little into his face and ringed with faint purple. 

He clucks his tongue at Mo Guan Shan curled up in a ball on the floor, shame already ripped away from him so he doesn’t care when he leans forward to tap his forehead against He Tian’s legs. Tian’s long fingers greedily comb through his red hair. 

He lowers himself then, careful as if he’s scared Guan Shan might send him away again, ‘ _I’m sorry_ ,’ he begins, face a portrait of remorse, deeper than anything Guan Shan had seen, eyes swimming with regret. He Tian leans until his lips meet Guan Shan’s, who doesn’t realise he’s been angling for that, that his hands are wrapped tightly in Tian’s tie, pulling him down, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,’ he mumbles, hands fluttering against Mo’s sunken cheeks.

Guan Shan huffs against Tian’s lips, ‘You did,’ he mumbles, whisper quiet, ‘I think the whole block heard you,’ he tries a tease, but it falls as flat as a lead balloon. He Tian’s fingers are stroking over his cheekbones now, remembering, altering their previous calculations, deciding to mark this hill as steeper than last thought. 

It’s quiet, blessedly so, and his apartment has stopped feeling quite so barren, each corner threatening a memory he doesn’t want to revisit. This is where he placed his shoes. This is where he dropped all those dumplings. This is where they’d sit and joke and laugh together like it was as easy as breathing.

It’s strange to be in bed without the slick of sweat and the smell of sex. It’s strange that the afternoon sun filters in from the open window, the blinds occasionally bumping against the frame in the breeze. 

He Tian closes his eyes as he brushes his nose against Guan Shan’s again, and once more, ‘You’ll rub me to death,’ comments Mo, tone indicating no irritation, but rather pleading him to never stop, if it’s death you want to give me I’ll take it, hold it in my hands and thank you if you’ll hold me through it.

He Tian however looks troubled and pulls away a little, Guan Shan whines, ‘Am I hurting you?’

‘No, no, _no_ , never leave-’ and it’s just like that where truths slip through the gap, where what’s kept closely in Guan Shan’s heart finds its way out through the back door. 

He Tian smiles, and goes to kiss Guan Shan’s collarbones again. Mo wonders if this is what it’s like to be eaten by a toothless piranha, ‘I’ll never leave you again, if you’ll have me,’ He Tian flicks dark eyes up towards Mo, who flushes and wonders if he means what he thinks he does. 

‘You’re on,’ he replies, catch in his throat betraying the false casual tone. 

He thinks- well, he doesn’t expect somehow, for it to fall so easily into place, but somehow, somehow it does. 

\--- One year later --- 

The metal of his ring clacks gently against the metal of the ladle. It’s all quite pleasant, really, the reminder that it’s there, that it isn’t a dream. Still it shocks him, much the same as the weight of their new keys after they’d signed onto a fixed mortgage, He Tian sulking at Mo’s insistence that he pay half, sweat bleeding into Mo’s collar in the stuffy office, feeling something markedly _different_ when they’d walked out. Like this is what _normal_ couples do, that this is what he’d always told himself he couldn’t have. 

It didn’t stop there, the things he’d once scorned now frequently were accepted without much fuss. Every now and again He Tian would present him with something, a new device for the kitchen, a thicker blanket for their now, blessedly larger shared bed. The _bed_ \- they’d spent one full day at one weekend at some dumb warehouse picking out a frame, why he hadn’t just done it online, Mo can’t remember, but he swears to this day that He Tian had snuck the delivery men a few notes and they’d delivered the incorrect size. Smaller than they’d wanted, so Guan Shan was still pressed against the much too warm furnace that He Tian called his chest. But another gift Mo gracefully accepted was a new air conditioning unit, one of the only conditions Tian had listed should they get a place together. 

Somehow their partnership had just eased all the hinges and cogs Mo hadn’t thought needed to be tended to, He Tian carefully nursing him back to working order. He’d never have pegged He Tian as someone who put much stock in people, not back in school, but he diligently does so with Mo, has the conversation he knows he doesn’t want to, is careful with his words, is careful with his actions, his tone of voice. Mo isn’t sure he deserves it, and wonders when it is that He Tian grew up. When did he suddenly become a functioning fucking _adult_.

One night when they’re cuddling - _hard not to with a bed that’s too small, you dick_ \- He Tian holding his hands and breathing shallowly against Mo’s neck, he mumbles something.

‘What?’ Guan Shan slurs, sleep almost claiming him.

‘- said I love you,’ He Tian repeats, and suddenly Guan Shan is wide awake, back ramrod straight and eyes wide open.

He hadn’t needed it, the ring on his finger testament enough, He Tian had told him even if it wasn’t _official_ and shit, it was enough for him, and Guan Shan had smiled in a wobbly kind of way and agreed, kissed him before he could say something stupid. The clean, safe corridors of their apartment complex so different from the past ones Mo had known, that He Tian had searched for every night for weeks, somewhere in _‘their’_ budget, close enough to work and Mo’s mother, not giving it up to some underling to take care of, but only wanting to do it himself. He’d even suggested they get a cat, for Christ sake, found some sad little stray in an adoption centre that they’d go and look at this weekend, because he knew Mo had always wanted one but the shitty landlords he’d had never allowed it. He wants to ask if he's a stray too, whether he'd similarly adopted him with both eagerness and a subtle awareness that he came with baggage. He used to think like that at least, the thought it gone from his head as soon as it's realised. He knows better now. It all made Mo conscious of how He Tian felt for him, and he tried to respond in kind, dinner ready for when He Tian returned home, tired and with shoulders aching, with a warm bath where he’d come and wash his hair with fumbling fingers, Tian lying that no he hadn’t got shampoo in his eyes. Rubbing insistently at broad shoulders without being asked, proud of himself when he got better at working the knots free, happy when He Tian’s furrowed brows slackened and a low hum emanated from deep within his chest. 

Mo Guan Shan rolls over, He Tian’s fingers trailing around his rib cage and pulling him into his chest once he’s settled, so Mo can comfortably address his protruding adam’s apple.

‘You know I love you, too, don’t you, idiot?’ That didn’t quite come out right.

He can feel He Tian’s laughter before he hears it, shaking his chest, and he turns red all the way up to his hairline, ‘Don’t laugh at me, you _bastard_!’ He Tian’s arms tighten around him, and it’s impossible to get away from the fucker then. 

‘Ah, _Little Mo_ ,’ he whacks Tian on his chest and is vindictively pleased that it leaves a mark, ‘You’ve had me since the moment we met,’ at that he does not hit Tian, but hides his face deeper in the camouflage of the covers. 

It is too easy then, to fall asleep, comfortable in the knowledge that while his own heart ventures far from his body, following Tian wherever he goes, he too has a companion. He Tian’s own heart flutters in his clasped hands, _look after me, don’t leave me again,_ it asks.

 _I love you,_ it whispers, just as He Tian mumbles it in his ear once more, both of them slipping into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> hey so this is my first go at writing some tianshan <3 i recently fell into the fandom (and instantly in love) 
> 
> you can find me @3lji on tumblr!
> 
> i really hope you enjoy it, please let me know what you think xox


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